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UCU response to proposed trade union legislation

15 July 2015
| last updated: 10 December 2015

UCU said the government's plans would do nothing to improve workers' rights and exposed the government's plans as an attack on working people.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'The Conservatives have made a considerable effort to portray themselves as the party on the side of working people. However, reducing the few rights that workers still retain inside an already tight legal framework on industrial action will do nothing to help working people or their employers.

'Strikes arise because of a breakdown between staff and their employer. If these proposals are enacted they will only increase mistrust between the two and worsen industrial relations. Strikes are always a last resort and never taken lightly by people who forfeit their pay.

'If the government was serious about increasing democracy in union ballots it would allow things such as electronic and workplace voting. Instead it is seeking to impose minimum turnout levels and victory margins that were not applied in the general election or the Scottish referendum.

'Demanding unions secure the kind of results that MPs couldn't, and police commissioners daren't even dream of, expose these regressive plans as a blatant attack on workers' rights.'